More of My Favorite iOS Apps

Continuing from my previous list, I think I’ll make this a series, and post new apps I’m using every few months.

Sorry, its not going to contain Snapchat-like apps, photo-filters, or games. Mostly finance and security apps.

These apps are becoming daily drivers or at least seeing me use them every week. I’m not a hardcore iOS user, but maybe you’ll find something new to try out from my ever-rotating favorites list. So in no particular order, here are some of my favorite new iOS apps.

Why I love it: An online-only bank app. Simple Bank is a breath of fresh air, compared to my current brick-and-mortar bank in Michigan. Their app is easy to use, keeps track of goals, payments, and budgeting. I question why I even use physical banks anymore now that 99% of my money is moved around electronically. I honestly use credit cards for everything nowadays. But its nice to know there are new options out there besides Chase, BoA, CitiGroup, and Wells Fargo. Simple is great in this niche banking service. Online only and without any physical cash ever being exchanged… its weird at first, but it makes sense given how fast everything is moving with the internet. I can’t wholesomely recommend this bank for everyone. You’ll have to compare your needs with their offerings, for example, you can’t write checks with Simple bank. So if you need those, then don’t bother. Or if you withdraw from ATMs frequently, then you might pay more in fees than your current bank. I don’t do either of those things, so Simple was, well, a simple choice.

Why I love it: Its a free GitHub notification app. It doesn’t do everything that CodeHub app does. (Which lots of programmers recommend btw.) Its main course is push notifications for GitHub. And its side dish is to quickly locate GitHub repos by name, and view their contents. This includes the readme, code, issues, and pull requests. To setup GitHawk, you’ll simply generate a personal access token under your GitHub profile settings. Thereby granting it the granular permissions you want it to have, and leave out the ones you don’t want it to have access to. And you’re done! Its a very lightweight app, and I found it to be much more useful than CodeHub simply for the push notifications alone. Which CodeHub charges a premium for.

Why I love it: Cloudflare is a great service, but they lack their own iOS app still. Until then, Cirrus (formerly Orange Cloud), operates in the middle here. But it does everything I wanted it for anyway. Graph the requests per hour, threats, http/https hits, edit page rules, edit DNS records, and more. If you have multiple domains its easy to switch between them. Cirrus is clean, lightweight, and very easy to use. Its actually faster for me to open Cirrus and check my website statistics, than it is to login to Cloudflare.com.

Why I love it: Its a free, encrypted, chat service. Go ahead and stop using Facebook Messenger, Skype, WeChat, Slack, Hangouts (or whatever Google’s latest chat service is called), and start using Wire. Wire is free, and doesn’t sell your data, contacts, or chat history for extra money. And while other encrypted chat apps, like Signal were a great exercise in end-to-end (e2e) encrypted chat, they really don’t stand a chance against Wire’s beautiful and easy user-interface. Its honestly the only way to get new users en masse. Not to mention, the cross-device chats and application supports just about everything you would need. From mobile Android/iOS apps, to Desktop Mac/Windows/Linux, to Browser Firefox/Chrome/etc. It doesn’t require a phone number to signup, and doesn’t require your contacts list. Its by far, the best encrypted chat service to date.

Why I love it: Its a free, public registry of encryption keys. If you’re using PGP emails, or just want to verify your identity across social media outlets, then Keybase is your friend. They’re kinda like the phone book of encrypted emailing. You’d lookup a friend and use their public key+address to email them. Keybase also has an encrypted chat application, that I believe works on Desktop and Mobile. But honestly I haven’t tried it yet. Mainly because I’m trying to get family and friends to try Wire first. (Its harder than it looks.) Whereas, Keybase seems to focus more on technically-apt users or IT folk. Which is more obvious with their encrypted git repository feature.

Why I love it: A free cryptocurrecy portfolio app. Track your crypto purchases and investments across multiple exchanges and currencies. A friend recommened I give this app a shot and its been great. Which is saying a lot because there are a boat-load of terrible “first-to-market” apps on bitcoin/cryptocurrencies. Its hard to figure out which to trust and which are bullshit. Blockchain.info’s app is just sad. HODL app was too simple. Coinbase doesn’t track purchases well. And the list goes on and on. Blockfolio gives you absoltely everything you’d want to know. It was overwhelming at first, but once you find out how to add past purchases and track their individual values, it really shines through the pile of garbage apps.

And that’s all for now! Let me know if you have an absolute favorite app you want me to try.